In some ways, Nicolosi is right. The bishop did not say, don’t do this or you will be excommunicated.” This gives a false impression of what the church really believes. His lack of clarity only confuses the faithful, and as a result, more will likely continue to ignore authentic church teachings.

I’m laughing when I should be crying. This line, in particular, has me in stitches:
“Some say they are withholding their names because they don’t want to lose their jobs in the church.”
What a church, what a country (or countries, in this case). I wonder if they’ll celebrate Mass in their respective chanceries.
Dear God, have mercy on us all.

Nicolosi seems to be missing the salient point that “leaving the family” has nothing to do with her own intentions or her own sincerity. It is the logical outcome of her own actions, and it will happen regardless of what she or her supporters think about what she is doing.
It’s just one more example of someone who thinks the Truth is whatever they want it to be, instead of an objective standard for all of us.
Of course it would be nice if the bishop was a bit more clear in his own explanation, but as far as I can tell (from the excerpt), it is the (confused!) Nicolosi paraphrasing what he said, or what she thought he said, in a personal letter to her.

“An April Le Moyne College/Zogby International poll found that 50 percent of American Catholics support women’s ordination. Forty-nine percent support mandatory celibacy for priests.”
I wish these polls would indicate if the people questioned were practicing Catholics.
Also, from what I understand, the ordinations occur in international waters, so they are outside the jurisdiction of a diocese. Does that mean that the women, once ordained, will only offer mass on a boat in international waters?

Hmmm . . .
A little common-sense check here, folks . . .
It doesn’t make much sense to me to make a judgment about Archbishop Flynn’s actions, solely based on how they are presented to us by the woman traipsing off to Canada for an invalid, sacrilegious “ordination.”
Didn’t you notice that your “source” for what the Archbishop did — or did not — say in his letter, was this woman? You haven’t seen his letter; and you aren’t privy to any other conversations or correspondence he may have had with her, right?
Did it occur to you that her account of the Archbishop’s comments might be, ahem, SELF-SERVING?: “He did not tell me not to do it,” Nicolosi said. “He did not use the word ‘excommunication.'”
Assuming it’s true he “did not use the WORD, ‘excommunication,” that hardly means he didn’t make his meaning plain nonetheless…
And, gee, what POSSIBLE motive could this woman have for fuzzing up that part of this? Hmmm . . . let me think about that…

“Some say they are withholding their names because they don’t want to lose their jobs in the church.”
Just think, she could be your DRE, or your RCIA director, or the head of your adult faith formation team …

re: the “quote” from Archbishop Flynn
He also didn’t use the words “delusional”, “clownish”, or (your word here)…
Just how does a life-long Catholic woman get to the idea that she has a “calling” to the priesthood? I took special note in the article that when her husband was ordained to the deaconate, “something just clicked … why not me?”
I know I’m naive about many things, but shouldn’t a call to the priesthood include – oh, let’s be wild & crazy – some mention of prayer, holiness, or soul-searching?
And – Am I just being hopeful, or does it seem that the majority of female wannabees are post-menopausal?

Kenny, that’s when you scour the news articles and find their names and plaster them all over the internet, like I’m going to do.
The fact that they work for the church is outrageous. They’d ought to be horsewhipped and the diocese ought to get zero donations til action is taken to make this right.
This act that they are going to unsuccessfully attempt carries a penalty of automatic excommunication and I hope people realize that. The participants lose all rights as Catholics–they are Catholics no more.

Names: Victoria Rue, Regina Nicolosi–from the public record.
They’re involved with the schismatic splinter church formed in Rochester, NY in 2002–Donato and Ramerman, etc. Look it up on the net, the whole parish split and half of it was excommunicated for these highjinks.

The headline is completely accurate.
While the women will not BECOME Catholic priests, that its precisely what they PLAN.
“from what I understand, the ordinations occur in international waters, so they are outside the jurisdiction of a diocese. ”
I had been wondering what is up with the boats (the Danube Seven I assume were in the middle of the Danube — was that outside of any diocese?)
“‘Some say they are withholding their names because they don’t want to lose their jobs in the church.’
Just think, she could be your DRE, or your RCIA director, or the head of your adult faith formation team …”
I wish…. ours don’t do anything they blatant — they just purse their lips in class and inflect what they are saying to the point where they sound like bad community theater actors: “Of course the Church hierarcy BELIEVE they do not have the power to ordain women, at least for NOW, we won’t DISCUSS that. AT THIS time. Hmmm.”
“They’re involved with the schismatic splinter church formed in Rochester, NY in 2002–Donato and Ramerman, etc. Look it up on the net, the whole parish split and half of it was excommunicated for these highjinks.”
Is that the parish Todd was involved in? I think he has written of it here. (Not approvingly, I’m not accusing him of anything.)

The women show an amazing ignorance about the Catholic faith that they profess to believe.
I know a nutty woman (I realized I’m making a judgment) who says that God has “called” her to be a Catholic priest. How can God call her to a “ministry” that doesn’t exist? My suggestion to become an Episcopalian was not well-received.

No, Indefense. He may have been supportive of it, I don’t know about that, but the Todd that comes in here is from Kansas City, I believe, where he’s some sort of music player or something.
I know exactly what you mean about the “church ladies” you have. Chanceries and diocesan offices have been full of these people for years, many seeking to undermine the church while seeking to “professionalize” their “careers.” They’re people who are largely unprepared for the work they do–ignorant about history, liturgy, philosophy, theology and law. They ended up where they are because they knew somebody when the changes occurred in the 60s and 70s. Their judgments are all homemade and straight out of the consumer culture because it’s all they know.
It’s high time we got rid of many of them. I propose starting with all those who belong to heterodox associations like CTA, CFC and WOW.

Lynn, you’re not the only one prepared to label her “call” as nutty. As I’ve said before, holiness always is accompanied by virtue. Obedience to the teaching of the church is a virtue. Therefore disobedience to the teaching of the church is the opposite of a virtue, which is called a vice.
This woman’s idea is a vicious lie. She needs to either tone it down and learn to listen to what the church actually teaches, or admit to herself that she already *is* somewhere else. Then the Episcopalian church won’t seem so remote to her.
If she has her heart set on a priesthood thing, and she can’t be disuaded, she belongs there or somewhere like it anyway.

Well, I played priest too, when I was little. Before I had made my first Communion, I misheard what the priest said to the big people as he gave them the Host. So I administered Necco wafers to my kid brother and the dog, solemnly intoning, “Bonnie and Christ.” (I did wonder about Bonnie; she didn’t make an appearance in any of the Bible stories I knew, and yet she clearly had to be Somebody Important.)
Actually, I think it would be more apt and truthful if these priestesses did say “Bonnie, or Cyndy,(or whatever their first name is)and Christ” when they’re doling out their bits of organic gluten-free bread. After all, the whole thing is mainly about their little selves, isn’t it? Christ comes second. And the real Body of Christ doesn’t enter into the picture at all.

Hopefully this doesn’t sound too impertinent, but what happens when an RCIA student doesn’t go along with a heterodox RCIA leader? Can that leader prohibit the RCIA student from joining the Catholic Church? How dangerous are the ultraliberal RCIA types beyond simply presenting bogus misinformation?

As someone who knows Archbishop Flynn personally — he offered to be my spiritual director for several years after I left the seminary — I feel obliged to come to his defense here.
1) As Septimus said, we don’t know what the letter from Flynn actually said.
2) I know the Archbishop well enough to know that if he didn’t use the term “excommunication”, it wasn’t because he is too weak to lay the facts on the table. It was because he has the heart of an evangelist and a shepherd. He wants to give even Judas one last chance to reconsider his suicide mission. And he won’t be satisfied that he has done everything he can unless he demonstrates the mercy of God to the prodigal who is still “a long way off.” He knows all too well how unattractive the Gospel of the elder brother is, how completely un-winning it is. No one is attracted to a truth proclaimed by someone who traffics in power plays or who serves up the kind of justice that issues from a spiritual cramp.

{{{{{ “Women Priests in the Early Church
In the year 494, women’s participation in the leadership of small communities came to an end when Pope Gelasius decreed that women could no longer be ordained to the priesthood. This legislation is perhaps the strongest proof we have of women serving as spiritual leaders in the early Church. Women’s roles in the church diminished as popes and bishops marched in lockstep with the Roman authorities.” }}}}
Apparently, things were not always as clear cut as they are presented today….

Of course, we know that “women are just not competant too, from Gelasius…
{{{{ Pope Gelasius I, 494 AD, on women serving at the altar
“Nevertheless we have heard with impatience that disrespect for sacred things have come to this level that even women are tolerated to administer at the sacred altars and that a sex which is not competent deals with all the matters which have been entrusted only to the service of men.”
Letter to the bishops of Lucania, in J. D. Mansi, Sacrorum consiliorum nova et amplissima collectio (Paris, 1901ff. ), vol. 8.44, cap. 26. Accordingly the liturgical ministry of women is considered to be disrespectful of divine, holy “things. ”
}}}}
Spoken like a true male chauvinist pig…hehehe.

Tantoday:
You can’t believe everything you read on the Internet. Inventing tradition, ala http://www.womenpriests.org, doesn’t make Truth, it only obscures it. Your time would be better spent in reading, e.g., “Why Matter Matters”.

I’m guessing the first quote from Gelasius, in context, was “Women may not be ordained” rather than “Women may no longer be ordained” – and it might well be the first time a Pope *had* to make a formal statement in that regard. And if it’s the “first statement” to that effect, it might look like a sudden prohibition.
The same thing gets used by fundamentalist Protestants who say papal infallibility was “invented” at the first Vatican council, or by neo-Gnostics who say Christ’s divinity was “invented” at the council of Nicaea. The Church doesn’t tend to make statements on things that no one disagrees about.

I googled to find the source of the quote about Gelasius. I believe the source of the quote comes from an essay by a Father John Shuster, titled 39 Popes Were Married!.
The sentence “There is solid historical evidence that women served as priests and pastors prior to this time” is sourced to When Women Were Priests: Women’s Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity by Karen Jo Torjesen, which was briefly reviewed at First Things. Quote: “As lamentable as it may be to Torjesen, professor of Women’s Studies and Religion at Claremont Graduate School and associate at the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, there was no period in early Christian history when women were priests in the church and her book offers no evidence to the contrary.”
The sentence “In 494 women’s participation in the leadership of small communities came to an end when Pope Gelasius decreed that women could no longer be ordained to the priesthood” is sourced to “Padovano, A. Power, Sex, and Church Structures. A lecture presented at Call To Action, Chicago. 1994.”
I hope this helps.

Lest anyone take Tan2Day’s breathless historical proclamations seriously, check out what EWTN’s library reveals about Pope Gelasius’ epistles and the question of whether or not there were woman priests in the early church:http://www.ewtn.com/library/SCRIPTUR/OTRANTO.TXT
In short, this pope’s writings support the fact that there were abuses of the church’s teachings on the ordination of women in the first centuries of Christianity, nothing more.
Not clear whether the 4th century boatrockers chartered a boat on a Canadian river, however.
The more things change, the more they stay the same, Tan2Day. Hehehe.

The whole issue of women’s ordination is nothing but a sad extension of adolescent preoccupation with the self. It’s a companion and parallel piece to so-called homosexual marriages and supposed “gay” rights, the craze for some for the need of sex changes, the slide down into polymorphous perversity in all uts ugly ramifications, the addictions of pornography, the self-esteem movement and a demonic host of programs that focus on the self as center of a microcosmic universe.
Archbishop Flynn’s tepid response and the condoning of women’s ordination by Bishop Gumbleton in his coy statements place the most serious blame squarely on the many of our Church leaders. Charity does not automatically presume polite, wishy-washy reactions. Sometimes, as St. Paul has noted, it requires a good parental kick in the a…

Mark t-k,
Yes they can indirectly. They’re not going to come right out and attack you, PROBABLY. But they can make the whole thing hell on earth and get you to drop out. In case you’re wondering we have tons of RCIA drop-outs. There have been articles about it at the NCCB site–they’re trying to figure out how to decrease the numbers but are unwilling to examine the real causes, I believe.

Clayton, your comments don’t convince me he has the heart of an evangelist and a shepherd. She’s about ready to go out tomorrow and commit spiritual suicide–automatic excommunication, and he’s being to delicate to say the word.

Not sure what your point is, B Knotts, but lay formation, lay holiness and well-formed lay leadership is the solution, not the problem.
Just because quite a few catechists and other lay staff and volunteers have screwed it up over the past few decades doesn’t mean that it’s fundamentally a bad idea.

Well, I’m just expressing my particular opinion on the matter; it’s possible we don’t agree.
In my opinion, the worst sort of clericalism is the sort which causes a layman (or, probably more commonly, a laywoman) to believe he must be in the sanctuary in order to fully “participate” in the Mass.
You need only observe from where these bogus “vocations” are coming.
The right way to approach the lay vocation is to imitate Christ in our daily lives, at work, at school, etc. It’s more challenging, to be sure, but is also much more meaningful.

“I know the Archbishop well enough to know that if he didn’t use the term ‘excommunication,’ it wasn’t because he is too weak to lay the facts on the table. It was because he has the heart of an evangelist and a shepherd.”
I don’t know the good Archbishop at all, and I would give him the benefit of the doubt in any event. However, I do know that many priests and bishops have been squeamish and hesitant in the use of words such as “excommunication,” “sin,” “heresy,” “apostacy,” etc.
Rarely have I heard such words at Mass. Imagine my surprise then, when at Mass today (Sunday), the priest discussed “excommunication” in his homily, explaining that it might be necessary in order to avoid “scandal,” that is, having others misled and drawn away from the faith.
He’s one of the new transferees, since we are one of the dioceses that had a good number of transfers, which is an issue that got a few folks here all twisted up in knots a few days ago. It just goes to show you that some good can come out of them. I expect I’ll have a few more good surprises from this priest.

MichiganCatholic,
I believe it is one and the same Todd. He lives and works in the Kansas City area now. However, I’m pretty sure he is either from Rochester, NY or lived there at one time. Don’t know if he had any involvement with this parish or just knows of it. If he’s reading this thread, he can choose whether or not to respond.

Today the Boston Globe had an article about a woman to be “ordained” a Catholic priest. At least the article did state that the Catholic church considers these “ordinations” invalid. But it was clear that this woman feels “called,” and ipso facto, to her that means God is in fact calling her. No mention of the fact that we don’t give such vocations to ourselves; the call comes through the church. It’s all part of the culture of relativism. No surprise that this woman plans to minister to gay and lesbian couples, divorced Catholics, etc., and will no doubt tell them they can do whatever they want and there is no moral law to govern their actions by.

The Holy Spirit blows where She will in many and diverse ways to perfect the work started by Jesus and it is very instructive to look and listen. Can any blogger here deny the disproportionate number of females in parish ministry? Readers, Eucharistic Ministers,parish finances/administrators,catechists,bereavment teams, and coordinators of endless committees and activities, in raffles and food related money raisers. If the good ladies stopped all activity today much church activity would grind to a halt.It is getting harder and harder to defend the rationale that only the ball-bearing can offer sacrifice, when in fact moment by moment those living the sacrifice are women. God knew what He was doing when he reserved the pain of child-bearing to the stronger sex. It is a gross misnomer to describe them as the weaker sex. All the Apostles were married as were the Popes and priests for the first three or four centuries. And it is common sense that in the House Churches of the early centuries that the woman of the house presided at Eucharist especially when the man of the house was absent. We are very, very slow to wake up to the fact that absolute power and clericalism need an open review in another Council and soon. The old wine skin is bursting.

Picture the scene:
The wicked Stepfather, Benedict,
has just left after giving poor, progressive Cinderella a tongue-lashing.
She labors away, unappreciated, finding it so hard to keep hope alive!
And then, a song comes to her heart…
“Someday, my Council will come!
Some day we’ll have women priests!
And how thrilling that moment will be
To contracept at will and so free!
“A new pope to see things my way
Oh, for that new day!
Women priests and gays married true;
Oh, Vatican III, I have high hopes for you!
Though every voice tells me no,
The New York Times says it’s so;
How can it be out of range–
Doesn’t God know it’s time for a change?
Some day my Council will come
Somewhere waiting for me
There a god I’m longing to see
And it’s me! Me! MEEEEE!

All the Apostles were married as were the Popes and priests for the first three or four centuries. And it is common sense that in the House Churches of the early centuries that the woman of the house presided at Eucharist especially when the man of the house was absent.
Every single one of the above statements is false. This is the sort of pseudo-historical argument that is bandied about matter-of-factly by the advocates of women’s ordination precisely because very few people have enough of a basic grasp of Church history to challenge it. The history-education deficit is also the reason garbage like The Da Vinci Code can become a runaway bestseller.
You might as well claim that the author and all the signatories to the Declaration of Independence were women, a fact which was later covered up by womanizing misogynists like Thomas Jefferson. The pop-culture myths about the roles of women in the early Church and the marriages of the Apostles and early Popes are no more credible than that.

“The whole issue of women’s ordination is nothing but a sad extension of adolescent preoccupation with the self.”
“You need only observe from where these bogus “vocations” are coming.”
Seems like these could apply as well to men who are or have been too taken with the trappings of the priesthood, either today or in the past. We’d be better off with men and women committed to authentic priesthood and service, rather than elitists, be they clerical or lay.
PS If you have a question to ask; just ask it via e-mail. I won’t bite. Likely I’ll be far more polite than the usual St Blog’s flamethrowers.

If the Virgin Mary presided at Eucharists, we’d have heard about it. And if the Virgin Mary didn’t presume to take the job from the guys, when the Eucharist in question was her own Son, then I don’t think I feel any need to become a priest or bishop any time soon.
Look, folks. Think about the Jewish heritage here. Think about the women of Israel. Were these ladies such frail delicate flowers that they wouldn’t have fought to be priests if they’d wanted to do it? Do you really think they weren’t physically capable of animal slaughter, when we all know a granny or great-granny who could break chicken necks with a single motion? So why do we think that our generation of women alone is capable of seeing the truth and fighting for our obvious rights?
There’s nothing too physically strenuous about being a priest or rabbi. It’s not a matter of discrimination or lack of ability; it’s a matter of complementarity of gender. Guys can never carry children or nurse them, so God has graciously given some of them one tiny compensatory area. Horrors.

Good People,
I did not stress strongly enough that Mary the Mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalen and other Women did all the heavy lifting during the Passion. Magdalen was the first witness to the Resurrection and became the Apostle to the Apostles. In my humble opinion , it takes a lot of mental laziness and ill will to insist that Christ was careful to limit the confecting of the Eucharist to a handful of celibates, each of whom had abandoned Him at Calvary. Even at Pentecost, they gathered in fear behind locked doors. During His public ministry, Christ took great pains to stress the dignity of women and their equality with men, stripping away the old notions of “slave and free, male and female…”. Are we to believe that Christ did not mean what He said so clearly and so often? Are we to ignore the predominant role of women during His public life?

Tom, it all comes down to this: were the Apostles faithful witnesses of what Christ said and did?
Because it was they who conveyed the “men only” thing; they told us Christ chose only men as Apostles, and they told us Christ left THEM in charge; and they only chose men to succeed them, in the three-fold ordained ministry of bishop, priest and deacon.
Now, you can posit, sans evidence, almost anything; but what we have actual evidence for — and it overwhelmingly points in one direction — is that only men were made apostles, only men succeeded them in what we call holy orders.
I just wonder if you realize that your theory means you are directly impugning the fidelity of what was handed down via the Apostles. You may not intend to do so, but you do all the same.
In short, if you’re right, the Apostles “got it wrong.”
And if that’s true, then the choices are stark: if the Apostles got it right, then the Church, on this matter, has been, and is now faithful to what they handed down.
But if the Apostles got it wrong, then we must add the further problem that virtually everything we know about Jesus is suddenly up for grabs, and in doubt, precisely because we rely almost exclusively on the credibility of the Apostles — now shown to have erred very seriouly about Jesus and his teachings.
If the Apostles’ witness is impugned, the whole edifice totters.
And Christianity stands or falls on this: we claim God entered HISTORY and became a FACT. The witnesses who told us this were the Apostles. If we no longer trust them, well, I don’t exactly WHAT you have left, but its not Christianity as anyone knows it. It’s something like “Spongism” or Unitarianism.

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